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Jay Russell - Page 1
Jay Russell
Brown HarvestBrown Harvest Newpbk 10 Oct 01
Greed & StuffGreed & Stuff
Waltzes & WhispersWaltzes & Whispers
What Ever Happened to Baby JuneWhat Ever Happened to Baby June
Burning BrightBurning Bright
Read Chapter One - Greed & Stuff New Oct 01
Kim Newman Interview Jay talks with Britain's top Horror author, film expert and critic
Latest Reviews at Tangled Web by Jay Russell
Violence, Censorship and the influence of Popular Culture Tangled Web Interviews Jay Russell
Stephen Jones Interview Jay talks to *THE* leading anthologist of horror fiction
Email: russell@genre.freeserve.co.uk
WebPage: http://www.sff.net/people/jrussell/
Buy at Amazon.co.ukBooks By Jay Russell
About the Author (Photo by Jane Stokes)
Bibliography


New Pbk Original - Four Walls Eight Windows (2001)
Buy at Amazon.co.uk Brown Harvest
Ever been a boy or girl detective? Ever wanted to be one? This is the story of what happens when boy detectives grow old. With guest appearances by just about every character you ever loved reading about when you, too, were young and innocent.
A delicious, dark parody about what happens when favorite literary characters from childhood grow up: a post-modern pastiche for eggheads.
What happens when the Boy Detective grows up, moves away, and comes home for a visit? His hometown's gone from American-as-apple-pie to darkest noir; his once innocent girlfriend has transformed into something both more and less than she once was; his father has become a bum on the skids - and that's the least of it.
At once a parody and a tribute to childhood heroes, Brown Harvest turns and twists the fondest memories of characters familiar to anyone who grew up reading detective stories. Definitely "R"-rated, drawing on a tradition of borrowing from popular classics that stretches from Shakespeare to Jay Cantor (Krazy Kat), Russell joyfully creates mayhem from colliding the worlds of hardboiled thrillers, "Young Adult" mysteries, and classic noir fiction.
With more cameo appearances than a John Landis film - with every character from Dr. Doolittle to Harry Potter popping up in the most unexpected places - Brown Harvest is what might have resulted had Dashiell Hammett written a "Hardy Boys" story to be filmed by David Lynch.
Published by Four Walls Eight Windows.
"A high-speed collision of The Magnificent Ambersons, Dashiell Hammett and a cast of refugees from childhood as astonished as you or I to be dragged into the modern world. Jay Russell has faced our demons for us, and I for one am grateful. " Jonathan Lethem
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Pbk Original - St Martin's Press (NY) (2001)
Buy at Amazon.co.uk Greed & Stuff
Marty Burns stumbles into a tangled mystery right out of the flickering darkness of film noir
Long ago he was the teen star of a TV sitcom. Then he was a washed-up private eye mired in L.A.'s scummiest turf.
Now Marty Burns is back on TV, playing a P l. and trying to make rehashed Hawaii Five-O scripts sound convincing.
While waiting to find out if his show is renewed (it's bombing with the 18-34 year-olds), Marty stumbles into a mess concerning the classic The Devil on Sunday, a shady remake, and a very real corpse.
Greed & Stuff is Jay Russell's strongest novel yet - a fast moving, wise-cracking L.A. mystery that confirms Russell's standing as one of the hottest young voices in the genre.
"Marty Burns is now a bona fide member of the PI pantheon." Brian Hodge, Hellnotes
"Marty Burns is back for another entertaining plunge into Hollywood noir...a thoughtful riff on truth, responsibility and the price to be paid for a few feet of celluloid." Publishers Weekly
"This is classic Southern California noir, bringing the mythic into the every day. This is one fun book to read." San Jose Mercury News
"Nathanael Hawthorne would be proud." Locus
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First British Edition Pumpkin Books (2000)
Waltzes & Whispers
Collection of 15 Short Stories (8 reprints and 7 new), an introduction by Michael Marshall Smith, an afterword by Kim Newman.
In his Introduction to this collection, Michael Marshall Smith says,
You'll find straight-down-the-line horror, gothic fantasy, cyberpunk and splatterpunk, literary fiction and noir. It's a smorgasbord of words, an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet of fiction. We've got searing-hot chilli over there, tasty enchiladas up front, some kind of weird gunk whose ingredients I don't want to even know about, and soothing guacamole on the side. The only thing that ties it all together is that they've all been produced by the same cook, and he knows what he's doing.
Jay Russell is a bravura author. He has wowed us in the aisles with the novels, Blood, Celestial Dogs and Burning Bright (and a fourth, Greed & Stuff, is on the way). Now comes this first collection of his shorter fiction in which the range and diversity of his creative imagination come to the fore. As you read, you will understand that each story is answering a question:
how would Dracula have passed his time in the twentieth century?
if virtual reality allowed the meeting of minds in cyberspace, then you would need virtual cops, wouldn't you?
if death is not the end of love, is that a blessing or a curse?
how might the resonances of history or the power of abstract ideas bleed into our everyday lives?
if the dead came back to life, would they have the same needs as the living or would it just be sex, drugs and zombie rock 'n roll?
what does lie over that rainbow?
These are stories of wit and style, sometimes savage, sometimes satirical, but always entertaining, in which Jay Russell dares to ponder upon the imponderable.
Cover art plus four illustrations by John Coulthart.
Buy the book from http://www.netcentral.co.uk/pumpkin/

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First British Edition Pumpkin Books (1999)
What Ever Happened to Baby June
A short story in:
New Tales of Madness and Dread
An original anthology of the best new horror and dark fantasy fiction by modern masters of the macabre…
Edward Bryant Ramsey Campbell Jo Fletcher Christopher Fowler Gregory Frost Caitlin R.Kiernan Terry Lamsley Joel Lane Roberta Lannes Graham Masterton Paul J. McAuley Lisa MortonKim Newman Kathryn Ptacek Nicholas Royle Jay Russell David J. Schow Michael Marshall Smith Brain Stableford Steve Rasnic Tem Jeff Vandermeer
Edited by Stephen Jones
Read Tangled Web UK's interview with Stephen Jones by Jay Russell
White of the Moon. When we begin to feel ourselves change. When the voices start to talk to us. From somewhere. Nearby. In our head. And slowly but surely we begin to understand what they are saying. What they want. Until the moment comes when they drown out everything else. Even the screams. Even the blood…
In this original collection of all-new stories of psychological and supernatural dread, that moment comes when a web page predicts the death of everyone on Earth... an imaginary friend turns out to be a killer... the suicide rate starts spiralling out of control... a woman obsessed with fire is consumed by her terror.., and an author enters a strangely familiar parallel world…
Such modern masters of the macabre as Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Graham Masterton, Paul J. McAuley, Kim Newman, David J. Schow, Michael Marshall Smith, Brian Stableford and others show you what it is like to lose your grip -- on your reason, your personality, even life itself -- as they take you into the terrors that await us all when our darkest fears are revealed in the White of the Moon.

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British Pbk Original - Robinson (1997)
Burning Bright
See Review by Liz Lees
The new novel from the widely acclaimed author of Celestial Dogs and Blood, featuring the former TV sit-com star turned detective Marty Burns
Bloody Hell!  That's what London's starting to look like now that Marty Burns has hit town.
Having made Los Angeles safe for quality detective drama, Marty is ready to conquer England with his new show, BURNING BRIGHT. Marty follows the bloody footsteps of Jack the Ripper, only to walk into a modern evil far more terrible than any mere serial killer.  Hunted by Ultma Thule, a neo-Nazi cult with mystical powers, Marty forms a fellowship of eccentric allies to counter the Thule's dark threat.
From a secret voodoo temple in the slums of Liverpool, to arcane Druidic rituals in Arthurian Cornwall, to spectacular magical battles above and beneath the streets of London's East End, Marty races against time and fate to save the soul of a nation.
And he doesn't even like the beer.
"Burning Bright delivers the goods in all respects. Excitement, humour, action and curry... What more could you ask for?" SFX
"Devotees of the supernatural-horror-comedy-mystery should be in seventh heaven." Kirkus Reviews
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About The Author
Jay Russell was born in 1961 in Queens, NY and misspent much of his youth rooting for the NY Mets baseball team. He attended Cornell University, receiving a BSc in communications in 1982 and a masters degree in communications in 1986. At the University of Southern California he earned a PhD. in Communication Theory and Research (1991). While at grad school he tried his hand at fiction writing and sold his first story "City of Angels" in 1990 to Midnight Graffiti (also anthologised in Splatterpunks). During this period he supported himself working as an operative for a Los Angeles detective agency. In 1993 Jay moved to England with his British wife, a lecturer in Media Studies. His first novel Celestial Dogs was published by Raven to wide acclaim in January 1996 and this was followed by Blood in October 1996.
In our Interview, Jay talks about Violence, Censorship and the Influence of Popular Culture. Why not visit his web page where you'll find more aboutCelestial Dogs, Blood and Burning Bright, including excerpts from the novels.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

  • Brown Harvest (Four Walls Eight Windows Pbk, 2001) New Pbk Oct 01
  • Greed & Stuff (St Martin's Press (NY) Pbk, 2001) (Marty Burns)
  • Waltzes & Whispers Short Stories (Pumpkin Books, 2000)
  • What Ever Happened to Baby June Short Stories (Pumpkin Books, 1999) in White of the Moon (Marty Burns)
  • Sous Rature Short Stories ( 1997) in Dark Terrors 3
  • Burning Bright (Robinson Pbk, 1997) (Marty Burns)
  • Lily's Whisper Short Stories ( 1996) in Dark Terrors 2
  • Celestial Dogs (Robinson Pbk, 1996) (Marty Burns)
  • Blood (Robinson Pbk, 1996)

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